John Kahoon wrote:
> Oh ya, I think midget hp's dropped when they went to the 1500.
It didn't drop, it went up.
Actually, the number stayed the same, but the number was
expressed as net hp, which is a stricter measurement than
the old bhp the 1275 was advertised in. The power also
appeared at a lower RPM which for most people is a
positive thing.
If you grab a brooklands gold portfolio for the car,
you'll see the performance changes for all years of the
cars.
The 1500 Midget was also the first midget to claim 100mph+
even in US trim. (I don't need 50 emailed replies saying you
did 100mph in your stock 1275, I'm going on impartial published
period reviews here)
The performance numbers were also all around higher. Note
than when reading the Brooklands portfolio, you have to
compare apples to apples by watching which magazine reviews
are from companies based in California and which aren't. There
are a few reviews that are California-spec cars and they
shouldn't be compared to rest-of-north-america cars to
pick a winner.
It would seem that the UK 1500 Midget was undoubtedly
the fastest stock Midget of all time, but even the US
spec 1500 was more powerful than the 1275.
Somewhat of a lucky situation really. BL (BMC?) couldn't
afford to redevelop a new engine for the MGB so it's power
kept going down every year.
The Midget engine was able to grow throughout the range
(948, 1098, 1275, 1493) so it was not only able to stay
drivable through smog controls, it was actually pushed a little
farther each time.
--
Trevor Boicey
Ottawa, Canada
tboicey@brit.ca
http://www.brit.ca/~tboicey/
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